Who said the US Judicial system was biased to big business?

[weemadando]

Now, I'm not 100% on the details, but I have to imagine that there'll probably be another appeal here.

Aussie inventor's $445m Microsoft windfall wiped out
ASHER MOSES
September 30, 2009

An Australian inventor, who was set to reap the lion's share of a mammoth $US388 million ($445 million) damages award from Microsoft, is now set to get nothing after the US judge hearing the case decided to ignore the jury's decision and hand victory to Microsoft.

Ric Richardson, who divides his time between Northern Rivers in NSW and California, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy.

The company alleged Microsoft earned billions of dollars by using the technology in its Windows XP and Office programs.

In April, a Rhode Island jury found Microsoft had violated the patent and told Microsoft to pay the company $US388 million, one of the largest patent jury awards in US history.

But on Tuesday in the US (today Australian time), US District Judge William Smith "vacated" the jury's verdict and ruled in favour of Microsoft.

In a telephone interview, Richardson appeared dumbfounded by the decision.

"It's such a shock that I really have to have my lawyers unravel this mess for me," he said, adding he could not comment further before taking legal advice.

"It was never about the money. It was about the ethics of it ... winning a court case is not winning the lottery."

The judge had ruled in favour of Microsoft in 2006, but an appeals court overturned his decision, saying there was a "genuine issue of material fact" and that he should not have ruled on the case without hearing from a jury.

But in his order today vacating the jury's decision, Judge Smith said the jury "lacked a grasp of the issues before it and reached a finding without a legally sufficient basis". The full judgment has been published online by seattlepi.com.

Fortunately, Richardson said he had not been on a spending spree since the jury's decision and had only bought a "chook shed".

He was recently featured on ABC's Australian Story and, for the past few months, he has been helping other Australian inventors get their ideas off the ground.

"I've had probably 400 people request help with their inventions and I've been working my way through them and just trying to help most of these people get over the humps that stop them from going beyond just having a great idea," he said.

Richardson reportedly came up with the idea for the patented technology during his former career as a sound equipment programmer for bands and singers ranging from INXS to John Denver.

The job required him to use pricey specialist software but there was no way to trial the software before buying it, which pushed many musicians into using pirated software.

Before getting into software development, Richardson, with his brother, invented the "Shade Saver" cords used to keep sunglasses attached to a wearer's neck. Profits from this invention were used to fund his Uniloc venture.

Richardson stepped down as a director of Uniloc in January this year, documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show.

He has sold some of his Uniloc shares in recent years but is still one of the company's largest shareholders.

Richardson's patent, one of many under his name, relates to work he did in the early 1990s and covers a software registrations system that allows software makers to create try-before-you-buy versions of their work.

Once users buy the software, they get a registration key that unlocks the full featured version of the software.

Uniloc claimed Richardson showed a copy of his software to Microsoft in 1993 but Microsoft did not license it, instead developing its own almost identical version and incorporating it into its products from 1997 or 1998.

Microsoft said that its system works differently from Uniloc's and that Uniloc's patent was obvious.

[Netko]

Or in other words, a patent troll managed to swindle a jury of computer illiterates into awarding him a gazillion dollars and a judge for once did the right thing and vacated the stupid verdict which if left standing would be yet another proof that the jury system doesn't work with modern complex issues.

The guy basically patented the license key concept. Its such a blindingly obvious concept, and in use way before this guy came upon it, that such a patent should never have been granted in a million years in a sane patent system - but we all know the US patent system is anything but sane, especially with the entire field of software patents (a field controversial enough that other jurisdictions are extremely reluctant to allow them at all).

The full judgment is here: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/lib ... corder.pdf (haven't been able to read it yet on account of being on an EDGE connection).

[Netko]

Yup, I was right - from the judgment: "What remains is a firm belief (indeed a certitude) that the jury “lacked a grasp of the issues before it” and reached a finding without a legally sufficient basis." In other words, the jury were retards. Its elaborated at length in the judgment, but it boils down to the jury believing the Uniloc expert witness who dumbed down the material (specifically, the functionality of the MD5 hash algorithm) to an absurd level (he basically explained that the MD5 hash makes a "Reader's digest" version of its imputs) while disregarding Microsoft's computer science professor who went into great detail about the functionality of the algorithm (which is important because the whole dispute centers around if Microsoft's algorithm is essentially the same as the summing algorithm in the patent - which it clearly isn't to any expert). That argument arouse because the judge narrowed Uniloc's wideraging claim (they were essentially claiming that any system where the user activates the software using license keys and hashes with a central server falls under their patent) to a specific implementation that is described in the patent - and that implementation came with a specific (bad) hashing algorithm which is clearly different from the MD5 and SHA1 algorithms MS uses. However, the jury still declared that MS infringes. Hence the judge essentially calling the jury retards in his setting aside of the judgment.

The only thing this case proves yet again is that the jury system is an archaic embarrassment in modern complex cases because the jury is usually to stupid and uneducated (uninterested) to truly understand expert testimony and instead goes with the folksy charmer. Essentially the entire jury trial concept for cases like this is one giant style over substance fallacy.